Introduction

Marlies van Wijk (29/01/1949 – 26/02/2011) was a Dutch ceramist, born in Breda. She studied at the Academy for Visual Arts Sint-Joost there and stayed on to work in the city for over fourty years as an artist and art teacher. 

The group of Breda artists active in that period was large and varied. Some of them became famous, like Teun Hocks, Moniek Toebosch and Sef Peeters. Others kept making interesting work during long periods in relative silence.

Marlies belonged to the latter category. Only a few photos of her and her works remain. 

Although Marlies concentrated on teaching she did participate in a few group exhibitions. Her biggest exhibition took place in 1983, at the Beyerd Museum in Breda, where she showed a large-scale conceptual work, now unfortunately lost, consisting of 903 different hand grip forms of clay laid out on the floor of the museum.  

I first met Marlies in the seventies, when I went to an art school for kids called the Beeldenaar. My other teachers were Teun Hocks and Akke Sins. On my last day there I took my new Polaroid camera with me and made this photo of her:  

She was a great teacher – showing us things instead of telling us what to do. I remember thinking why regular school was not more like that! After I left the Beeldenaar I would still see her occasionally walking her dog, and we always stopped for a brief chat.

Marlies only rarely sold her works, but she did exchange some of her art works for cash subsidies and some of her works from the eighties have survived that way.

In this blog I will publish one of her largest works – a collection of models for large vases, bowls and cups from 1986. This work can also be exhibited in its entirety when it looks like a mysterious field of grave gifts by a lost civilization. Some of them seem to contain secret messages that on closer inspection turn out to be faces. They are full of joy – I remember she was always making them, to fill up empty spaces in the firing kiln. It was her way to keep ideas and to try out new forms – not with pen on paper but in clay. I am not sure how many of them were eventually made on a larger scale. 

I hope people enjoy this peek into her sketchbook in clay. Once the description is complete we will exhibit the work in its entirety in an art gallery in Breda.